Wednesday, February 20, 2008

I was never against Apple's iPod till today. Me and my friend Kunal were going to Magnet office which is at Kandivali, to meet Nirav. Met Kunal after many days and he'd told me he'd got a Apple iPod nano as gift. And I was excited to see it and eager to hear music n podcasts on it.

He handed me that masterpiece in auto-rickshaw while we were on our way to office. It was afternoon and as usual I was carrying the FOSS.IN cap. That cap is precious thing to me and helps me promote the event. Back at tour everyone took turns and put their head in that cap. That cap was most popular thing around during three-day tour and looking at it all of my classmates kept shouting terms like "foss", "open-source", "foss.in", "debian" and many others. So that cap is important to me.

Now, coming to point, to get comfortable I kept that cap on side and was listening to music n podcasts on Kunal's iPod. We arrived at destination, got off rickshaw and went to office. That time, I found cap missing and figured out I'd left it out in auto-rickshaw itself. Its weird because I never forget things and only because I was hearing music on that sick thing known as "iPod", I forgot that FOSS.IN cap.. The quality of iPod is so great that you forget the rush of mumbai traffic. So, I advice think buying a iPod..

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

We'll went to Karla Caves. Its quite on high mountain. Has two ways to climb, by stairs and by steep road.; We choose none. We did some rock climbing till a point and then used stairs because to climb further, we needed ropes which we did not have. Reaching top gave my camera some work, to get amazing snaps. The caves were amazing and I say everyone must visit it. I got some photos from inside. Will upload them on my photo album.

We went back to hotel, got our bags and left Lonavala with great moments to cherish..

Even though their were some maniacs in bus who ripped mazaa apart, but we managed to come back and enjoyed it.

Morning was great but did not get a chance to capture sunrise. Breakfast was somewhat eatable. In morning we did roam around hotel area. By the way hotel was "SweetHeart Hotel". Found out some shops where we can get something to eat in case hotel would repeat its bad quality food streak.

In afternoon, by around 4PM we went to Valvan Dam. Its a place of national importance and hence photography was not allowed. :-( But, some of them managed to capture some snaps at dam.

Then, we made it to market. Bought some *chikki*. Record was hold by Abhish for buying most quantity of *chikki*, about 4KG. ;-)

Then, we went back to hotel just only to see that *worst* quality food. To enjoy and have some non-veg food, we went to Smokin' Joes Pizza which we'd noticed while roaming in market. It served me best pizzas I'd ever ate.

This year we'd a much better bus and we left from college as usual by indian standard time aka being late. We had our group comprising of myself(MaCkeR), Aniket(aNIX), Ranjan(ChotaDON), Mandar(maDDy), Mama(sometimes called Ankur, thats his real name), Dipesh(Diprya). The journey was awesome and its great that I do not suffer from *travel* phobia.

We reached STPI[Software Technology Parks of India] which is situated at Hinjewadi near Pune City. That was the industry we were to visit. It is the place were "internet comes from" as described by the person giving us talk that day. We got to learn a lot on how the web works.

Then we went to a hotel which was situated near Sinhagad fort. It served us with good food. We were really hungry by that time.It was then time to trek our way to Sinhagad fort. It was great, although we went in jeeps which people can hire to go to top. I went for first time their and next time I plan a visit their, I prefer to walk up the fort. It would be a really great adventure. Got some great photos up their. Will upload them soon on my album.

We then made our way to our hotel which was back at Lonavala. Hotel was pretty *bad*, it was under maintenance. To add fuel to fire, even food was worst. Sh*t off to tour manager.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Tomorrow early in morning at 5:30AM, I along with my college friends will be heading to college and from there to Pune for our annual industrial visit. I know that's too early in morning, but it will be fun..

Its a three day visit to Pune which will cover visit to industry and a lot of sight-seeing. This year I have my Sony Ericsson K850i with 5MP camera, means I get lot of high-quality photographs. I love photography.. We've also scheduled a Sinhagad hike, I never went their. Let the photograph creativity in me fly..!!!!

Also, if I get time plans to hook up with some Pluggies. Many relatives too are scattered around Pune so would mostly if permissible would meet them too.

And now that their's warmth in air and weather is pleasant, expecting a great weekend.. Will be back at /home on Monday night.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

As everyone who knows me, knows that I'm a free software maniac. Free software projects always face problems of buying bandwidth for their projects. So, the P2P world has a solution. Using torrents instead of a direct downloads. No server involved(tracker is involved though), solution to bandwidth problems.

Every time I need a FOSS project and if it has torrent download made available; I use that only. That's how you save a lot of money of project maintainers. Seeding torrents after your download is complete is easiest way to contribute to a FOSS project. I do contribute to Debian GNU/Linux[www.debian.org] by this way. I'm doing this since I got my internet connection and first look at Debian.

I'm downloading Debian testing DVD's. But, today a surprising thing happened.. The upload speed has been shot up to 200KBps which earlier was 30KBps. That makes my share ratio above 2.0.. Amazing thing and now onwards I'll be contributing to a more greated extent. Thanks goes to my ISP for removing upload-speed restrictions, VCPL who respects FOSS community and supports us to great extent..

I urge everyone to please use torrents or any P2P sharing to download FOSS and do keep sharing it. Seeding is your first step to contribution..

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

It would be mostly a *NEW* concept of taking a test of students by a teacher. This concept might have been used and named same way by someone else, but for me and everyone in my class, its being created by our Cpp professor. This test has been crafted by keeping Google's statement "Don't be evil..!!" in mind.. Because, it just doesn't sound evil..

Rules are simple:-

You sit with your pals next to you, unlike in jumbled-up(as regular exams have) way.

You are allowed to use reference books or notes you might have. Of course, no need to carry chits.

You can chat or discuss with your fellow friends.

One of second or third option is chosen..

Of course, time is limited.. :-(

We'd experienced the OpenTest on this Wednesday. It was fun giving a test like never before..!! We're allowed with second option, but not third. It was a Cpp program(definitely not a hello world one..) purely based on application of theory concepts. It was cool one.. Obviously, did some mistakes and got to learn a lot..

My thought::

Old methods of exams have been for centuries to today date.. Now, we must follow what father of evolution "Charles Darwin" had said, "Change or Die".. Also, we've to keep in mind the free-software movement.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Consider your audience as a bunch of idiots who know nothing about FOSS, Linux or anything that matters, and that you know everything.

Do not test your laptop with the projector before hand. Make sure you waste the first 10 minutes of your talk getting the projector to project. And when you get half-baked projection, keep blaming the projector and proprietary drivers for any defects.

As your audience are morons who are incapable of using a computer or finding things on the net, you don't need to construct good examples and demos. Just show them some ready-made demos available on the internet or on your machine.

Make sure you do not have alternate media like a flash stick or your material already stored on the internet in case your machine doesn't work or the internet is down. Just curse the organizers and cut your talk short.

Ensure that there is no whiteboard/blackboard available in case power goes off. And *never* ever have your notes on paper so you can use them with a whiteboard. You are too important for obsolete techniques like this.

Make bold statements that Y FOSS software is far superior to X proprietary software. Explain that you know this because some friend told you. Start to actually demo the superior FOSS equivalent, but make sure that time constraints prevent you from finishing the demo before the audience realizes that you have never used either X or Y.

Never ask the organizers what kind of audience is expected, how many people and what should the scope of the talk be - what do those clowns know anyway?

Never ask the audience what level they are, what they know and what they would like to hear. You know what is best for them - shove it down their throats.

And, most important, drop names - keep saying: 'as Richard was telling me the other day', 'when I bumped into Guido in Beijing he said'.

Lastly, after the talk is over, don't call the organisers to ask when you can talk again - wait for them to call you.